"The Clouds Of Saturn" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

few minutes it would dip below the horizon and First Night would begin.
УStop torturing yourself,Ф Crandall said. УDaneТs death wasnТt your fault.Ф
УIt should have been me,Ф he muttered, his voice breaking with emotion. УFleet
liaison is my job. If IТd done my job, Dane wouldnТt have been aboardDelphi when
she went down.Ф
УNo, but you would have! You would now be dead and Dane and I would be having
this conversation. Dane was a privateer. He knew what he was doing. In our line
of work, people get killed.Ф
УBut damn it, theyТd surrendered!Ф
Crandall nodded. УAnd the Alliance shot them down anyway. Not too difficult to
figure their motives, is it? Most of the New Philadelphia brass were aboard that
ship. Better for the Alliance that they not be around to cause problems during
the assimilation. Dane was just one of the poor bastards unlucky enough to be
aboard the ship when the Alliance assassinated it.Ф
Sands did not answer. One part of him could see the logic of RossТs words even
though most of him burned with rage at the injustice of it all. Then there was
the corner of his brain that remembered how he had always laughed at people who
mentioned war and justice in the same breath.
Following the disappearance ofDelphi into the mist, Sands had evaded the
Alliance fleet by heading directly for the nearest cloud wall. In so doing, he
had adopted the tactic that the Alliance had used to set up their ambush.
Unlike Earth, which is largely heated by the sun, Saturn derives most of its
heat from internal processes. The predominant mechanism is the formation of
helium droplets under high pressure. Once formed, the droplets fall as helium
rain into the vast hydrogen sea that covers Saturn to a depth of several
thousand kilometers. As the helium droplets sink, they generate heat. As the
lower atmosphere is heated, vast columns of rising hydrogen form and produce
convection cells that cover many thousands of kilometers. The cells are then
smeared along the lines of latitude by the planetТs high rate of rotation,
forming globe girdling linear storms that give the planet its characteristic
banded appearance.
The rising legs of the convection cells are called Zones, and are characterized
by dense clouds and unstable conditions. As the organic-molecule-laden hydrogen
rises, it cools, causing its load of chemicals to condense out to form multihued
clouds at various altitudes. Blue clouds of water vapor form a layer 500
kilometers deep in the atmosphere, while a layer of brown ammonia hydrosulfide
mist forms a hundred kilometers higher still. A third cloud layer, this one
composed of white ammonia ice, forms at a depth of 320 kilometers from the
arbitrary line that marks the edge of the planetary atmosphere. Non-condensing
particulates are carried above the ammonia cloud layer by the rising convection
cells. There they form the high thin haze that softens the planetТs outlines and
mutes its colors when viewed from space.
By the time the rising column of hydrogen reaches the top of its arc, it is cold
and largely devoid of impurities. As the column falls back toward the depths, it
sweeps away the clouds and creates vast canyons of clear, stable air. The
astronomers dubbed these canyons УbeltsФ because of their dark color. It is the
alternating pattern of the broad light zones and narrow dark belts that form
SaturnТs bands. By diving into the cloud wall, Sands had sent his ship across
the zone - belt interface and into hiding.
Once he had won free of the battle area, Sands sought safety for his ship and